


as death is to birth (the moon to the earth)

by Mx_Carter



Category: Hannibal (TV), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alana is my everything, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Bisexual Female Character, F/F, Hopeful Ending, Mutant Hate, POV Alana Bloom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 08:17:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6947233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mx_Carter/pseuds/Mx_Carter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Insects are far smarter than humans give them credit for.</p><p>A character study of Alana Bloom; psychiatrist, FBI consultant, professor and mutant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as death is to birth (the moon to the earth)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Summer Fades by Smoke Fairies

If anyone were ever to ask Alana why she never told anyone, she would simply say that no-one had asked. That’s true. It’s also true that _it_ is completely irrelevant to her work, and to any of her professional or personal relationships. Therefore, as far as Alana is concerned, it’s no-one’s business.

Not that she’s ashamed, oh no. Very few people leave Xavier’s Academy for Gifted Youngsters ashamed of their mutations. Just…she’s cautious. She thinks that’s perfectly reasonable.

 ~~~

Alana has never been bitten by a mosquito, no matter where she goes. When people comment on this, she smiles and pins it on luck and a childhood in the Deep South.

She’s far too calm and far too careful to let questions like this make her skittish and defensive anymore.

 ~~~

Alana turns Will down, because she knows she’ll never stop feeling desperately sorry for him, and that’s really not a good foundation for a relationship.

After all, he’s on record as an empath. The entire FBI knows something about what he can do. People have written papers on him, for Christ’s sake. He’s on show, the FBI’s mutant mascot. And he’s essentially trapped in a position where he has to use his mutation for some of the worst work a powerful empath like him could end up doing.

Of course, he could leave. There’s nothing binding him to the FBI, except for the fact that he’s a registered mutant with the kind of mutation that tends to make people incredibly nervous, and he’ll probably never find work again. And there’s the matter of moral obligation, and all the other admittedly true but still unhealthy bullshit Jack Crawford throws in his face. Other than that, he’s totally free to go.

He tells her this one night when they’re out on his veranda on night, him drinking whiskey and her drinking beer. He laughs as he says it, and she’s fairly sure he actually finds it funny. Will’s sense of humour does tend towards the maudlin.

She almost tells him them, because he deserves to know that someone has his back. Something in his eyes stops her.

A fly lands on the table between them, and her hand twitches towards it before she can stop herself. Will glances at it, sighs, and waves it away absentmindedly. Affronted, the fly buzzes off into the fields, and Alana lets a bit of her awareness drift off with it, piggybacking in its little fly brain, seeing the world through its fractured vision.

She doesn’t tell Will then, and she doesn’t know why. It’s one of many, many regrets.

 ~~~

When she is seven, a man with gills and webs between his fingers is found murdered in his home, the next town over. The police rule it a suicide. Nobody believes them. They don’t care.

It’s an open secret in the town, something everybody knows but no-one will talk about. And if the preacher makes room in his next sermon for a story about the triumph of good over wickedness, and the actions of brave soldiers of God against the armies of Satan, well. Preachers say these things all the time.

Little Alana Bloom looks around and sees people nodding, muttering ‘Amen’. She thinks she can probably pick out the ones who did it. Their expressions are the most vindicated.

Little Alana Bloom clings to her mother’s hand as they leave church, and burns the nodding and the _amens_ into her brain. She will remember them for the rest of her life.

 ~~~

A very large part of her wants to tell Hannibal.

And why not, she thinks. She’s half in love with him; he’s calm and intelligent and amazingly steady, and he understands her like no-one apart from Will could ever manage.

But something always stops her before she gets the words out.

Hannibal is no bigot. He won’t hate her for it, or fear her. But still…

Later she will look back on this, and realise that she knew all along. Her threat radar has always been exceptionally sharp. And she’d noticed the complete lack of insect life in his house. Chalked it down to his excessive neatness, but knew all the same.

Insects are far smarter than humans give them credit for.

 ~~~

Alana knows she’s a good psychiatrist, even if she spends most of her time teaching or consulting for the FBI now. She’s intelligent and grounded, without compromising her empathy. She’s proud of herself and her achievements.

Sometimes, when it’s late and she’s slightly tipsy, she takes the time to wonder how she can relate so easily to humans, when she doesn’t consider herself one.

She’d written a paper about that once, about how every generation of mutants had to answer this question, and how everyone has a right to self-determination, and about the politics behind both answers. She’d been quite proud of that paper. She’d noticed, while researching it, that most of the mutants who considered themselves human had good, accepting home lives, and a very large proportion had invisible mutations. Alana had, she felt, answered that question for herself a long time ago.

Always, she comes to an understanding that her personal politics are irrelevant to her job. It is slightly jarring, though, to remember that as far as her colleges and most of her friends know, she’s as human as human gets. Jarring, and more than a little discomforting, in ways she doesn’t feel like analysing just yet.

 ~~~

It was an accident. She will swear that until the day she dies.

And yes, she knew he was allergic to wasp stings. She won’t deny that. But murder is premeditated, and she never intended to kill him. But when a boy that much taller and stronger than you is reaching for your panties, having just thrown you to the ground so that your head cracks into a rock sticking out of the dirt and you are trapped and dazed and scared like you’ve never been before…

Most people lash out with fists when they’re as desperate as she was then. It’s not Alana’s fault she has something better than fists.

Still, little Matty, her baby brother Matty is watching, crouched in the corner of a field, and he sees the wasps swarming. He runs and tells their mom, because Matty is scared of wasps and he knows Alana might be hurt, and Dad always told him to go get the most responsible adult for help when something bad happens. Before she leaves, she makes sure to tell him she’s not mad.

Alana had kept a bag half-packed since she started work in the little convenience store at fifteen. She has savings in a bank account her parents don’t have the details of, and she pays her own phone bills. She has a map of the states marked with the cheapest and quickest route to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, and knows their admissions policy well enough not to be concerned about fees. She’s been ready to leave for years.

So when her parents’ words swarm around her like stinging wasps, she stands tall and shrugs it off. Alana’s head aches fiercely, and her panties are torn, and she straightens her spine and walks to the bus station with her bag over her shoulder, and doesn’t let herself cry until she’s on board.

 ~~~

A wasp has got in to the manor, and Alana can’t help the fear rising up in her. The poor thing is butting up against the window, confused and terrified when the clear space does not become air. It keeps trying because it doesn’t know what else to do.

Alana is frozen in her seat. Her legs could probably support her, but she doesn’t know if her mind…Mason’s house puts her on edge more than she’s been since she left her hometown. She’s too paralysed by how panicked and _trapped_ the wasp feels. It’s the most brutal of triggers.

When Margot enters the room, she glances at Alana, follows her eyes, and crosses to the window. Alana almost speaks then, because if Margot kills the wasp she doesn’t know _what_ she will do, but then Margot does something so beautiful that Alana can’t stop staring at her for the rest of the week.

She opens the window, carefully chivvies the wasp out, and watches it fly away.

 ~~~

Alana knows that she doesn’t need a gun. She learns anyway.

In the end, it doesn’t do her a damn bit of good.

That night…she was so shocked. The man she was so close to being in love with had been revealed as more of a monster than anything her old preacher had ever decried from his pulpit. Abigail, the one she couldn’t save, was alive. Nothing is safe, nothing is sacred.

She doesn’t know, okay? She doesn’t know why she let it happen. She doesn’t know why she fought and fell like a scared, defenceless human.

She does know that she will never touch a gun again.

Alana Bloom does not need human weapons, because she is not human. She has something they never can have, never will.

Alana Bloom will never let a human bring her low again.

 ~~~

When she gets her doctorate, she goes out with her fellow students and gets tipsy on good beer and triumph. The next evening, she has another party, for her high school friends.

They all kept in contact, because bonds forged in a place like Xavier’s don’t fade easily. They’re all stupid proud of her, and she loves them for it, adores them all and tells them at length, because mutant parties mean good booze and plenty of dubious cocktails with stupid names. Her friends, Levant and Clara, Root and Tempo, the kids who taught her how to be proud and strong and to trust herself, the people who made her into a person she likes being, grin back, equally drunk (apart from Clara, who’s only slightly tipsy because she burns off alcohol like no-one Alana’s ever met before). At some point in the night, they all tell her they love her, and wish her the best.

After the shitshow with Hannibal, she wakes up in the hospital to find they’re all there, clustered around her bedside, flown in from Alaska and Australia and Ghana and a few states over. Levant is crying, unashamedly, as he clutches onto her hand (they dated for three weeks, before deciding they worked better as friends). Root leans over and presses a kiss to her brow, sticky with the lip-gloss she wears religiously (they dated for a year, until they graduated and Root moved to Burkina Faso to help out with crops, and they decided not to do long-distance). Clara is stonily dry-eyed, white-knuckling the side of her bed-pallet-thing (Clara has lost her whole family, one by one, and Alana needs to apologise to her later, for making her think she was going to lose her too). Tempo smiles softly at her and tells her they always knew she was going to make it, even when the doctors didn’t think so, because Alana Bloom is not a quitter (she’d helped them pass the science classes they loathed, every single one, and they made her a perfect mixtape for every exam they aced).

Alana wishes she’d called them sooner. Another regret.

She doesn’t involve them in her revenge mission, but the four of them force her to keep in contact – “So we know that cannibal fuckface hasn’t American Psycho’d you yet,” Tempo told her, only slightly joking. Sometimes, she thinks they’re the only things keeping her sane.

 ~~~

The manor is a crime scene, so they move to one of the Verger’s other properties. It’s a large house sequested in the middle of meadows and forests, close enough to coordinate with law enforcement, far enough to have some distance.

Margot still looks shell-shocked. The word’s very fitting here; Mason’s death essentially dropped a bomb on her life. She’ll be picking out shrapnel for years.

Right now she mostly wanders the house, stays in the garden for hours. Sometimes, when they’re getting ready for bed, Margot will talk about how they should get a surrogate as soon as possible, so it can look like the conception was before Mason’s death. Alana knows her lover is not prepared to do anything remotely connected to impregnating someone with Mason’s baby.

She also knows that she wants that someone to be her.

Mason was a monster, undoubtable one of the worst things humanity had dredged up (and one day she will analyse why monster and human are so linked in her mind, and then probably cry). Despite this, he and Margot have the same parents. They may have a different pattern of alleles, but the source material remains the same. This argument is more than slightly flawed, but she consoles herself with the fact that the baby will be half her, a Bloom as much as a Verger. That ought to count for something. Besides, Alana has always sided with the influence of nurture in these sort of debates. This child will be raised as theirs. Alana isn’t human, and Margot has the potential to be more like her brother than either of them will ever acknowledge, but together they will not create a second Mason Verger. She knows this, and –

So sue her, she wants this baby. She wants to raise a child with Margot Verger, and damn it, the world has taken enough from her. It owes her this.

But as much as she wants to tell Margot to screw her plans for a surrogate, there’s one thing stopping her.

Margot and she both have trust issues. Alana is certain that if she wants to have a family with this beautiful, intelligent, damaged woman, she mustn’t keep secrets. Especially not a secret as important as this.

So one night, instead of changing for bed, she taps a half-undressed Margot on the arm, and asks if they can have a walk through the grounds together.

 ~~~

She tells Will at Hannibal’s house, when she comes to visit and finds him there. In the month since her injury, she’d been using her powers more and more – not that she’d ever really stopped, but she can’t stop thinking about that damn night, about being scared and forgetting –

Now, she has to struggle to be unobtrusive, like she’s back to her first weeks of college. The wheelchair is a good hiding place for all kinds of insect life, and even though she can’t quite feel their tiny feet on her legs yet, she loves the soft buzzing press of their minds around her, reminding her that even now, she isn’t even slightly harmless.

Will looks up when she enters, face tired and blanked, and then he starts suddenly. “Alana,” he says cautiously, “you have a beetle in your hair.”

She looks down at him, remembers seeing him through the eyes of the ants she sent into his hospital room. Remembers the harshness of his fear-sweat and the deep tiredness rolling off him, experienced through their finely-honed sense of smell, and she flicks her hand lazily.

A quartet of ladybirds take off from inside her sleeve and fly over to him, landing in his hair. He glances over at her and she opens her mind, even though it scares her to do so, because even after everything she can’t blame him, and Will deserves to know he isn’t alone.

His eyes are wide and wondering, and she doesn’t smile at him – she thinks she’s lost the ability to smile softly, at least for now – but she knows he understands.

After that, they don’t see each other until Muskrat Farm, but the part of her that will always care for Will Graham hopes it helped.

 ~~~

She leads her lover down to a field far from the house and the staff. It’s slow going; the ground may be firm, but her cane is still very necessary. By the time they reach the field, she is leaning on Margot more than she’d like. The other woman is tense, waiting. Margot Verger will always be somewhat paranoid, no matter who she’s with.

Taking a deep breath, using all her exercises to steady her heartbeat until she doesn’t want to pass out, she pulls herself away from Margot and walks further into the field. She glances back to check on her lover, and she looks like Alana feels. Wary, on edge.

Every titanium-plated bone in Alana’s body is screaming to stop this, to tell Margot it was all a misunderstanding. She’s sure she can make up some excuse.

But Alana is so very tired of hiding.

She smiles at Margot, trying to project a calm she really doesn’t feel. “Margot, I…” Her voice fails and she coughs, before forcing herself to speak again. “I need to show you something, and I need you to not panic, at least until I’ve explained.” Through sheer effort of will, her voice does not shake.

Margot stares straight at Alana for a few seconds, before she nods. It’s the best she’s going to get.

Alana takes deep breath after deep breath, slowly reaching her mind out. The signatures of the insects around her fill the air. There are thousands of them here, millions, flying and crawling and sleeping and eating, all of them hers to touch and to speak to. And no matter what she does, they will always listen, always come when she calls. She’s never touched so many at once, not even in her training, and after everything she’s been through at the hands of powerful humans, it is indescribable. Here _she_ is powerful, the sort of power Mason Verger and Hannibal Lecter could only dream of. Here she is a mother goddess of old.

And they flock to her, under the moonlight, her subjects, her children. They fly and jump and crawl towards her and she spreads her arms, throws her head back and welcomes them. They settle on her arms and hair and body, run up her legs until she doesn’t need her cane to stand. Wasps and bees and ants and beetles, grasshoppers and midges and fireflies that bathe her in orange light.

When she looks at Margot, she remembers to be afraid.

Margot doesn’t.

Alana’s lover is looking at her like she’s someone she’s never seen before, but in the best way possible. Slowly, as if she can’t help herself, she takes step after step forward. With a twist of her mind, Alana shows her children that Margot is a safe-authority-mate-trusted, and they part for her like the Red Sea.

Alana smiles and reaches out.


End file.
